Paranoia
by Shyrstyne
Summary: G1 Post-Auto Berserk. Ratchet brings Red Alert in for maintenance, and ends up bringing some tag-alongs as well.


Paranoia

**Paranoia**

I really shouldn't be working on this. I should be drawing manga and comics that I feel awfully guilty about. Really. But I've been working on this all week, so… forgive me, yes?

I like Red Alert. He has to be one of my favorite characters of the G1 lore… amongst many others, but you get the idea, right?

So anyways, I was putting some thought into him and his actions is 'Auto Berserk', and this little theory popped up. I have no idea if it fits into the continuity (not that there is much of one) or if the theory's even valid.

Ah well. It doesn't really matter. I just write for the fun of it anyways.

**Paranoia**

The lounge was relatively empty that day. Bumblebee and Spike were talking at one table, Hoist sitting alone at another. Huffer had walked through earlier, grumbling to himself, but had left shortly thereafter. It seemed most of the _Ark_'s crew was either on patrol or busy.

And watching it all from a corner table was Ratchet. The Med bay was empty for once, and the Decepticon's mercifully quiet, leaving Ratchet to do as he pleased.

Or at least, as far as the official records were concerned.

As far as _Ratchet_ was concerned he was in the lounge on nothing but business.

His comm. clicked imperceptibly, followed by Inferno's voice.

-_Has he come out yet?-_

_-Still waiting.-_ Was the short answer. The comm. clicked off.

Ten minutes later Cliffjumper had come and gone. Seven minutes after that saw Hoist leaving to assist Grapple in some new project or other. Another fifteen minutes found Red Alert making his way towards the energon dispenser.

Casually emptying his own ration, Ratchet stood and made his way towards the same place.

Red Alert's optics flickered nervously, his steps quick and jumpy, and fully intending on getting in and getting out as fast as possible. His optics jumped to Ratchet, only just noticing him as they converged on the same place.

_He's the CMO. Can't want your job. Good at what he does. Must want your job. They all know they can do it better then you. Nobody wants a jumpy security officer. Must…_

Ratchet calmly approached Red, who had unconsciously stiffened. Stopping in front of him, Ratchet lay a friendly hand on his shoulder.

_What's he doing? Scanning.. Scanning.. Two vital components within the area. Four none-vital. Forced Stasis lock activation component within 30 centimeters…_

"Are you all right, Red?" Ratchet asked. Bumblebee and Spike were watching from across the room now, curious. Red Alert couldn't stop himself from glaring a little, optics constantly moving, never really focusing on Ratchet, but watching every move anyways.

_I'm fine I'm fine I'm.. Not fine. You're not fine Red. You know you're not. I'm FINE. Plot plot plot plotting. They're plotting. My job…._

"I am perfectly alright. There is no reason to ask that. I'm fine." Red Alert grit out. Bumblebee glanced to Spike, who looked back. An answer like that definitely warranted a Not Fine.

Ratchet nodded understandingly. "I thought so."

With the deft flick of his hand, the one resting on Red's shoulder, Ratchet engaged a manual shut down in Red Alert's neck. Catching the dead weight as his newest patient slumped over, he could hear Spike's slightly panicky voice over Bumblebee's, who was trying to calm him down. Ratchet would have really preferred to have not had an audience, but it couldn't be helped. Red was starting to wise up to his old tricks.

"What's going on? What did Ratchet…."

"It's a medical thing Spike. Ratchet must think there's something wrong with Red's internals. He must want to check up on him." Bee sounded painfully uncertain even to himself.

"Why didn't he just ask Red or something?" Spike retorted. Bee's argument was weak, and Spike knew it.

"I'm not sure." Bee sighed. "Then again, this is Red Alert. He may have been avoiding maintenance checks again."

"Think we should go check it out?"

"It'd be worth a shot."

Ratchet resisted the urge to roll his eyes as they followed him, barely contained curiosity rolling off them in waves.

On entering the Med Bay, Ratchet motioned to First Aid, who had been forewarned and was waiting just inside the doors, to help him get Red Alert onto a berth. Bumblebee and Spike continued to watch. First Aid listened carefully and heard Ratchet send out a pair of dit-dit comm. clicks –a sound of confirmation- before opening a regular comm. line. The clicks were barely audible to even a trained medics audio's, and certainly beyond a humans hearing.

"Kid." Ratchet spoke. "What do you know about Head Cases?" A small panel was pulled from the side of Red Alert's head, revealing the wiring underneath.

"Of which sort?" First Aid replied, obviously joking.

"The sort that doesn't involve a certain set of twins." Ratchet joked back. Out of the corner of his optics he could see what one might call a 'thinking pose' come over Bumblebee. Spike just looked queasy about watching Ratchet mess around with Red Alert's insides.

First Aid chuckled. "As much as can be known without any actual experience I suppose. Head Cases are quite rare, are they not?" Ratchet nodded. "May I ask why you want to know?"

Ratchet gave him a look that clearly told First Aid he should know better and tapped the side of Red's cranium twice with the back of his forefinger. Realization dawned on the apprentice medic.

"…Oh."

It seemed that Bumblebee had realized the same thing, though Spike still looked hopelessly lost.. As well as looking deliberately away from where Ratchet was working.

"Does Optimus know?" First Aid asked after a moment. Ratchet shook his head.

"Not unless he figured it out on his own… Though I wouldn't doubt that he would. He likes to be semi-omniscient like that." Ratchet replied with a bit of a chuckle.

Spike had started pleading for someone –_anyone_- to tell him what was going on. Ratchet was only listening to him with half an audio. Bumblebee had that look on his face that suggested that he was still digesting what he had learned, and not listening at all to Spike.

"Who does know then?" First Aid was asking purely out of curiosity now. Ratchet noted that First Aid was watching him work. That was good. Dealing with head cases wasn't by the book, mostly because each case was more or less unique. It would be First Aid's job to take care of Red if anything happened to Ratchet.

"Inferno. Though I'm sure some of the more observant mech's have figured it out." Ratchet pulled apart two wires that had nearly rubbed each other through and set about fixing them.

"Would somebody _please_ tell me what's going on?" Spike was more or less begging now. Bumblebee, having finally realized how out of the loop his friend was, turned to him to try and enlighten him.

"I'm not sure how to explain it really. It's a phenomenon that sometimes occurs in us." Bee said. "I think the full technical name for it is 'post cranial-trauma degradation syndrome'. Calling them 'Head Cases' is easier."

"So then what is this 'post cranial' whatever it is?" Spike asked.

"It would be best to start with how much you know about Cybertronian physiology Spike." First Aid said, glancing briefly to the human.

Spike shrugged. "Not much really. Carly knows way more then I do."

"Do you know why we rarely survive being beheaded, while the loss of most other limbs is little more then a setback?" Spike shook his head.

"It's because the cranial unit is connected directly to the Spark, right?" Bumblebee spoke up. Ratchet grunted in affirmation. Bumblebee was fairly observant in the first place, though it was looking like Bee knew at least the bare basics of head cases.

"Your Sparks are like.. Your souls, aren't they?" Bumblebee nodded in answer to Spike's question.

"Our Spark's hold the bare essence of who we are, as well as being our.. 'life force' so to speak. However the cranial unit holds vitally important things, like our memory core, and several dozen other things I probably couldn't name. Bottom line is, our heads are every bit as important as our Sparks, just in a different way.

"Then how do you survive being… _beheaded_ at all?" The word clearly left a bad taste in his mouth, especially since he was talking about friends.

"Signals on air waves keep everything running for a certain amount of time, hopefully until a medic can get to it." Ratchet grunted, though Spike still seemed confused by something.

"Head cases happen when the cranial unit had been severely damaged. Whether it's been crushed or shot by a fusion cannon seems to matter vary little from what I've heard." First Aid spoke up. "For some reason, if the mech survives and recovers, his systems go haywire sometimes afterwards. Usually every vorn or two. The best comparison to a human would be temporary insanity."

"What I don't understand is why he didn't tell anybody." Ratchet grated out. "Trouble enough to have a head case on board. Downright dangerous is no one knows about it, as we found out." The temptation to cuff Red upside the head was there, though he ignored it because Red wouldn't learn anything from it anyways.

"Maybe that's why." Spike said. "Maybe he was scared that you would all abandon him if you knew." Ratchet seemed to consider this, while Bumblebee and First Aid just looked insulted.

"We would do no such thing!" First Aid exclaimed, astonished that Spike would even suggest it.

"Optimus would never allow it!" Bee added. Spike threw up his hands in a defensive gesture.

"I know that guys, but who says he did?" Spike gestured to Red Alert, still prone where Ratchet was working on him. Ratchet didn't pause in that work, though he did note that Spike was more observant than he had initially thought. After all, paranoia was rarely rational.

Ratchet decided to take Devil's advocate anyways, however.

"That doesn't mean he had any right to hide this from us. If we had known, we could have avoided that incident with the Negavator entirely." That had been a while ago now, it seemed to Spike, though long lived beings _would_ have long memories, he supposed.

"Inferno knew as well. He, if no one else, _should_ have told somebody." Ratchet continued.

"Why didn't he then?" Bumblebee mused. He knew that Inferno had known Red since long before the _Ark_ had launched, so it stood to reason that Inferno would know about Red's condition, but it still didn't make sense. Why _hadn't_ Inferno told anybody when Red was clearly in need of a medic?

"I asked him just that. All I got was some slag about a promise to Red." Ratchet grumbled. Though Ratchet knew and respected the importance of promises and what they meant to the various mech's on board, he couldn't really get over the fact that not only had Red nearly deactivated himself, he had almost taken out the entire crew with him.

Ratchet worked in silence for a moment or two, disconnecting this, reconnecting that, pulling apart things that most certainly weren't supposed to be rubbing together, checking, rechecking, and checking his work again as he went along. He took a spare moment to wish that head cases weren't so complex and time consuming to fix.

"Wait.. You said these symptoms or whatever showed up once every vorn or so, right?" Spike looked thoughtful. He wasn't really familiar with the transformer time-keeping system, but he knew a vorn was _way_ longer than a few months.

First Aid nodded. "Ordinarily, yes, though I've heard it varies a little from case to case."

"Starscream's null ray's, although they stabilized Red then, also sped up the degrading significantly. I've got to fix him every month now, instead of every vorn like it should be." Ratchet growled. "I'm still trying to figure out why."

"So you didn't know it would do that?" Bee asked, surprised.

"Null ray's aren't a preferred weapon among Decepticons, mostly because unless they're fired at high power at a critical area or at point blank range, they don't do much beyond paralyze." First Aid said. "There's no recorded incident of the two being brought together before, so it's a bit of a learning experience for us."

"Ratchet, if Red's here, who's manning security?" Bumblebee asked suddenly. To his credit, Bee only looked slightly alarmed, as though he'd only just thought of it.

"Blaster. I asked him to take over when I grabbed Red." Ratchet answered. Bumblebee looked satisfied at this.

"Come to think if it," First Aid started "I'm almost sure the Decepticons have a least one or two head cases of their own."

"At least. They aren't being taken care of either, by the looks of it." Ratchet said.

"Why wouldn't they?" Bumblebee asked. Surely even the Decepticons would make sure their troops were primed to wreck things.

"Head cases are_ dangerous_, Bee." First Aid said sadly. "Think about the Decepticon philosophy for a moment." When it was put that way, it made a lot of sense.

"But they don't turn on Megatron like Red did to us…" Spike trailed off. He got the feeling he was missing out on a few things.

"That was actually a combination of factors. Their head cases likely aren't half as bad as Red's in the first place, added onto the fact that Red Alert's specific ailment is paranoia, makes him much more dangerous to us and himself. The others are probably still dangerous and unpredictable, but retain the logic to stay alongside Megatron."

"Specific… You mean it's not paranoia for all these head cases?" Spike asked.

"Of course not." Ratchet scoffed. " Generally there will be some underlying personality trait that will become dominant over all other systems. Red probably was, and still is when he's lucid, always at least a little bit paranoid. As his systems degrade he becomes paranoid to the point of dangerous. For others it may be something else."

"There's other ways of telling a head case from a personality quirk of course, but it takes years of medical training and quite a bit of observation to tell early on." First Aid said.

Flipping the plating of Red Alerts cranium back into place, Ratchet sighed. _Another one down_ he thought.

Red would need an hour or so to fully integrate the changes into his systems. The conversation had fallen flat, and there was nothing left of interest to see, so Bumblebee and Spike left, off to find something to do. First Aid left shortly after, off to see his brothers, who had just returned to base.

Ratchet wondered, not for the first time, just who Inferno had brought Red to when he had gotten that first obviously serious injury. Whoever had fixed Red had obviously been nothing short of a miracle worker.

Because truth be told, while head cases were rare, Ratchet knew a thing or two about them and he had never seen anything as bad as Red Alert. The damage that had to have been caused in order to leave Red's internal's like they were would have had to be nothing short of lethal. He had a sneaking suspicion that Red didn't even remember anything before the injury. His memory core was a mess. His short term could still hold information well, but his long term was virtually blank, and there was less there the farther back Ratchet tried to check.

Not for the first time, Ratchet decided that he would grill Inferno for answers later.

Though in the back of his head, he already knew that Inferno wouldn't tell him anything. Some things… were just between friends.


End file.
